Ginger is a true dynamite dame
The rodeo announcer's voice sounds over the arena sound system: “We welcome the reigning North American Trick Riding Champions. They are the Dynamite Dames.” The music swells and the 3 women individually go through about 5 minutes of death-defying acrobatic stunts while their horse is going full speed over the red dirt. “Because our horses run so fast it keeps the audience engaged,” says Ginger Duke of Austin, who organized the group and both rides and teaches the sport. “The spectators are saying, ‘Omigosh she's upside and dragging the ground. Is she supposed to do that?' We try to keep the audience guessing as to what's coming next.”
The group has been together since 2015. Ginger was with another group when she first started out. “I was about 20 years old. It was actually a drill team that also did trick riding. A girl had quit to go to college and I got to fill in her place. I grew up doing gymnastics and cheerleading so riding a horse was just the icing on the cake and now look at me. I'm 39 years old and I'm still trick riding.”
When teaching girls how to trick ride, she emphasizes safety. “I'm kind of a drill sergeant. You can't get through the training without something happening. Horse riding we all know is kind of dangerous anyway, then strapping yourself to the horse and hanging upside down is much more so. It's not just learning the tricks. It's learning how to survive an accident. In trick riding it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when.” Ginger speaks from experience.
“I was training a horse and it double-barreled me right in the stomach. It really hurt. I went to find my boyfriend and told him I might need some help. He found my mom and off I go in an ambulance to the trauma unit. I woke up 5 days later and had gone from 135 to 100 pounds. The kick had lacerated my pancreas, and 7 inches of my small intestine right past my stomach was gone.
I was in ICU for 2 weeks and a hospital for 30 days and had multiple tubes sticking out of me,
“For an equestrian the first question after an accident is when can I ride again? My doctor told me I would never ride again and that I was the first one to ever survive the injuries that I received. For 6 months I had the tubes sticking out of my body and multiple more surgeries. Before the accident I had been training for the North American Trick Riding Championship. I said to my parents that I would love to be able to compete. My mother had a fit and told me that I was in no condition to do that. Eventually she let me go into a horse pen and saddle a horse. I was weak and had to have help getting on the horse. I did 5 tricks that first day back on my horse. My mom was having a coronary and said, ‘you did 5 of the hardest tricks that most trick riders can't do on their best day and you just did it after spending 6 months sitting in a chair.'
“I got my last tubes out in July and performed at a rodeo on July 4th. I went on in September to win the North American Trick Riding Championship. That was in 2018. So it's been a wild ride.”